yarrr!
I pirated a copy of SPORE off BitTorrent. It was never really a question of if I would, only a matter of when it would happen.
I know – I’m a horrible, awful person. There are developers out there who can’t feed their families because of me. People like me are single-handedly causing the downfall of civilization. But I just don’t feel that bad about it. Probably because of the way EA has handled this game.
One huge problem is simply the lack of a demo. The only thing out there is the Creature Creator which doesn’t demonstrate any of the actual gameplay. So there is absolutely no way for me to personally evaluate whether I want to pay for this game or not. And I’m unwilling to just take a chance and spend $50 on a whim.
Then there’s the issue of DRM… I’m not a fan of DRM in general, I think it’s a crappy idea. I really don’t like the idea that money I’d pay for a game would go towards crippling it, towards keeping me from doing what I want with that game. Any money I pay for a game should go directly towards making it more fun. And the DRM on SPORE is pretty heavy-handed… You are only allowed to install it three times. That’s it. No more.
I honestly could not tell you how many times I’ve re-installed Diablo II, or Warcraft III, or Half-Life 2, or Homeworld, or Red Alert… Machines die and have to get reformatted… Or maybe you stop playing a game for a good few months and figure you’re done with it and un-install it… Or maybe the game is doing weird things and you try a re-install to clear them up… Frankly, I think any kind of installation limit is absurd, but three installations is entirely too few.
So, I grabbed a copy of SPORE… It was certainly easy enough to find. Literally thousands of people downloading the thing. It was available on-line several days before it hit store shelves. And there are plenty of cracks to get around the draconian DRM – even folks who’ve legitimately purchased SPORE are looking for some way to get around the copy protection. If anything it was easier to pirate SPORE than most less-protected games out there.
But don’t worry… If SPORE is actually as good as I’m hoping, I’ll happily purchase a copy. And if it isn’t that good, I’ll quickly un-install it – I’ve got plenty of other ways to kill my time.